Gift article. No paywall bypass should be needed.

When told by an aide that Vice President Mike Pence was in peril as the rioting on Capitol Hill escalated on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump replied, “So what?”

When one of his lawyers told him that his false claims that the election had been marred by widespread fraud would not hold up in court, Mr. Trump responded, “The details don’t matter.”

On a flight with Mr. Trump and his family after the election, an Oval Office assistant heard Mr. Trump say: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

When the lawmakers told Mr. Trump that he had lost the election in Michigan because he had underperformed with “educated females,” the brief said, Mr. Trump was not pleased.

The lawmaker could tell by Mr. Trump’s “body language,” the brief recounts, “that he was not happy to hear” the assessment.

One of the themes that Mr. Smith hit upon repeatedly was that top officials close to Mr. Trump tried over and over to persuade him to simply concede.

During a private lunch in mid-November 2020, the brief says, Mr. Pence suggested to Mr. Trump that he should accept defeat and run again in the next presidential race.

But Mr. Trump did not want to hear about it.

“I don’t know,” the brief quotes him as saying, “2024 is so far-off.”